


here

by ohargos



Category: Before Sunrise (1995)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-21
Updated: 2008-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohargos/pseuds/ohargos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Close your eyes and point at any place on the map.</p>
            </blockquote>





	here

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my wonderful beta Noora.
> 
> Written for Thistlerose

 

 

If she could go back in time, she might tell her younger self that exchanging phone numbers with a boy she'd known for a day and a night wouldn't have necessarily been such a bad idea. Though maybe not - neverending long distance calls and a student budget wouldn't have mixed so well.

She scratches Che (he is curled up against her side, his purr a low rumble) behind the ear and listens to the occasional rattling of the phone line, electric signals crossing an ocean. (She wonders if their voices have changed since she sat across the aisle from him in the train an eternity ago, and thinsk they haven't, and thinks of how nearly every cell in her body has been replaced since then.)

"Anyway, I wanna see you."

And she likes the way he can say such things like that, so easily (maybe it's a little too easy for them, sometimes, maybe they should hesitate more), and smiling, replies, "Ah, that's too bad for you. Try and get over it. There are plenty of fish in the sea, no?"

His laughter crosses the ocean, "...What?"

"Kidding," she replies, the mischief audible in her voice, and Che rubs his head against her hand, "Where shall we meet?"

"Where? I don't know? Somewhere in Europe, like usually, I suppose." It could be a joke, but it's not, she can tell.

"In six months?"

"Exactly. No, less than a month this time around, please. But where?"

Paris would be easy, of course, and Vienna would be terribly nostalgic and lovely, but they are both too easy, sort of, and it's not like they have ever made this too easy for themselves. She thinks of places, places she has seen and places she has been longing to see, thinks of little graveyards covered in autumn leaves andbeaches with fossils in every other stone and olive trees in the dark, and then...

"I know! I saw this in some film, I think. You take out a map and close your eyes and point and wherever your finger lands, that's where you'll go."

There's a moment of silence, telephone lines rattling, and then Jesse, the laughter colouring his voice again, "No more of that rational adult thing, huh?"

She rolls her eyes at her ceiling and smiles to herself, "You have a better idea, then?"

"No, no, that's good, that's great. I think I'm running a little short on maps of Europe at this end, though. How about you?"

"Mm, wait a moment," she gets up, Che glances at her but is too lazy to follow. She lets her finger run along the spines of the books, gathered in knee-high piles all around. And there it is, an old map book, red leather cover with golden letters on it. "Oh yes," she says to the phone, and gets the book on the desk, paging through it with one hand, "Yes, I'll just get to the right page... There. You ready?"

An electrical current tingles through her veins. She looks at the careful lines of mountains and valleys, boundarylines, the tiny spots of cities.

"Yeah," Jesse says and it feels like there is barely any distance between the two of them, and she is sure they're both holding their breaths. Just as she is about to close her eyes, he says, "No, wait, how do I know you aren't cheating?"

"You don't."

"Okay, alright. Go for it."

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, and her finger brushes against the dusty paper of the map.

\--

The airport is no different from every other airport in every other country, and it's full of people parting and reuniting, and yet they find it to be the most peculiar thing, to meet in such a place. Jesse has arrived a day before - they figured it would be better, for him to sleep off the worst of his jet lag - and he comes to meet her at the airport, like a polite host, with a light bow of the head, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth, and as if this wasn't just as unfamiliar a place to him as it is to her, he greets her with a "Welcome to Helsinki.", and for once, he gets to be the one with the better pronunciation for he says the name of the city almost exactly right, whereas Celine struggles. (It's that thing about French and the letter 'H'.)

He had sort of been expecting snow, and yes, it's May, but he remembers reading something of the sort, some time, about reindeers and things, and he accidentally mentions this and Celine laughs, her clear, familiar laughter, and says, "Where do you think we are, in the North Pole?"

And outside there are barely any clouds in the sky and the sunlight is almost white and they decide to take a bus and see where it takes them. (Cabs are only meant for rides to places where you can't quite say you want to stay but do.)

\--

It's a rather small city, and there are trams clattering along (not red like in Vienna, but green) and cobblestone streets and the Baltic sea seems to be everywhere, not the straight cut of a river across a city, but unexpectedly disappearing and appearing again, as if the city really was an island.

They consider taking the metro but laugh upon finding that there is only one line and seventeen stops, and walk instead. This is the strangest thing, they can't stop thinking about that, this is the strangest thing, because it feels almost like the very first time they met, and yet not at all.

"Did you ever think," Jesse says, slowly, as they are walking across a small park surrounded by little houses, all softly coloured and with carefully trimmed, tiny gardens, "thatmaybe everything is a circle? You know, that we come back to where we started in the end?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, I'm not sure, I'm just. With relationships and things," (at this point she smiles in the kind of manner that makes him look away, and yes, his heart may have stilled for a bit) "It seems that in the end, you sort of go exactly where you were at the beginning. I mean, sure, if it's a bad break-up, the love and lust and all those nice feelings are gone, but the problems are pretty much exactly the same as they were when you began, even if they were under the surface at that point. And well, a little later, if you're lucky, you might find that even the good things are the same. I mean, the way you felt about that person has changed, but you still like the exact same things about them. And I just sometimes think that even in a larger scale, that might be true."

"Mm, perhaps. There is even the thing about death - you know, if you die a natural death, or well, what today's society calls natural, anyway - you slowly begin to sleep more, and your life grows a lot simpler. Much like it was when you were a baby."

And they end up to a little café, and there is a lady who asks them what they'd like (no menus exist there), and the coffee cups are mismatched and there are watercolour paintings on the walls and the lady starts to knit something in one of the tables, and in comes a boy with floppy hair and with a simple nod to the lady, starts to play the piano in the corner.

And this is that evening on the boat, with the girl playing her violin and the man his accordion, and the lady is the fortune teller who told them they were stardust.

(And perhaps here, in this tiny café in a country they picked eyes closed, the lady will turn from whatever it is she is knitting and say, "And when this is all over, we'll all be stardust again.", and maybe she is the one dreaming this all up on her deathbed.)

Later they walk down the hill and there is a wisp of smoke licking at the sky, somewhere in the distance, and music drifting from somewhere and he asks her for a dance.

\--

And they're back at the airport, they have made it so far this time, and her plane is leaving in an hour and his some time later.

Once they realise that they seem to be avoiding each other's eyes, they both look at each other, at the same moment, and this is clearly a mistake. There is the scent of petrol in the air, and the light brings out the red in his beard and she sort of smiles but not quite and he finds himself thinking of Botticelli angels.

All of a sudden, they are both at loss for words, and yet there are two things they both know should be said out loud.

One. They are acting exactly the same way as they did on the train platform eleven years ago, with the soft summer wind, and the golden light and all those unrealistic, impossibly lovely dreams that made them ache.

One, part two. Acting the same way rather certainly means they feel the same way as they did then. (Uh-oh.)

Two. They cannot keep doing this forever. It's not like either of them really wants to, anyway. What they really want is--

And Jesse walks around a little, trying to find the courage to speak, or maybe the courage to run away once more. He walks slowly around the hall and he can feel Celine's eyes on him. He hopes she would say it. He knows she won't. (She hopes he would say it. She knows he won't.)

He lets his finger travel across the map of the world hanging on the floor, the red lines marking the routes of the planes, almost like a firework, exploding all around. (He faintly recalls an old myth about red strings tied on your fingers, tied to the fingers of others, bringing you closer to those you are supposed to meet in this life.)

Then there is a shock of electricity, and he awakens, realises what it is he is looking.

Celine is standing by his side quietly and looking at him. Jesse looks at her.

There is a shared look; that of realisation. They look at each other, and the map, and then at each other again. The small space between them crackles with electricity.

Jesse smiles at her. Then he takes a deep breath.

He closes his eyes. His finger brushes the glass covering the map.

\--

fin.

(epilogue:

Yes, she misses her flight. And he, too.)

 


End file.
